


alone and together with you

by Carthage



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: BDSM, Dom/sub, Flogging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:37:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carthage/pseuds/Carthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan and Brandt are assigned to catch a mark, and have to pose as a couple to do it. No big deal. Except that they have to catch the mark inside a BDSM club, Ethan has to be the dom, and Brandt knows far more about this scene then he's telling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	alone and together with you

**Author's Note:**

> Cleaning out my documents, found this old kink meme fill.

"No," Ethan says instantly.

The others glance at him, and Brandt raises a brow. "The mark's got access to vital intel on the Iranian nuclear situation, and you want to turn down the mission?"

Ethan frowns, flounders a bit, because there's no real reason for him to be so irked by the idea of the mission, not when his team members have seduced all kinds of different men and women, but-

"I don't know how easy it's going to be for one of us to waltz into a completely underground gay fetish club in Tehran and convince them that we belong there. Besides, we'd probably have to go in as a couple, and who knows what sort of proof they'd require of the relationship?"

Benji opens his mouth, flushes, seems to think better and shuts it again, but Brandt snorts and says from where he's holding up the wall in the corner, "Depends on the couple's relationship, really. Might be a flogging, might be exhibitionism- one case involved letting everyone in the club that wanted to have a go at the sub, though that's rare and not expected in any facility I know of."

Everyone blinks, even Ethan, who prides himself on not being surprised by much. Jane starts, "You, er, know a lot about these places?"

Brandt smiles, wolfish, no happiness in his expression, but the directness of his gaze dares them to judge him. "I've been around enough that I know how to get us in, make a good show, and get to the mark. But I can't go in alone."

"I'm automatically out," Jane says, "so it's got to be Benji or Ethan."

"Can't be Benji." Brandt flicks a glance at Benji, who looks both relieved and perturbed.

"What's wrong with me, then?" Benji makes a token protest.

"Ethan's going to have to beat me pretty hard-" Ethan's eyes widen at the image that provokes, Brandt against a wall waiting to be hit, and he can't figure out if it's anger or lust in his gut, "-to make it convincing, and we'll need someone capable of running interference with security from outside to save my ass if I'm too sore to contribute properly."

Ethan jerks his hands up. "Wait, wait- why do I have to beat you? Why not the other way around?" Ridiculous, the newest member of the team martyring himself for them, and something he can't be comfortable with.

Brandt's eyes are steel. "Being whipped and enjoying it isn't an easy thing to fake, Hunt, and they'll be watching us for any tiny mistake we make. I could teach you how to do the easy parts, the kneeling, the crawling, the protocol- but if you're up there with a bullwhip on your shoulders and you're not getting off on it, they'll know."

"But you can fake it because-" Jane starts, and Brandt's twist of a grin silences her.

"Because it won't be fake." Brandt pushes himself off the wall and looks Ethan up and down, the blatant scrutiny in his gaze firing Ethan's blood. "As for you, Hunt, I'll meet you in the safehouse living room in two hours."

He leaves, the office door clicking shut behind him, and leaves the rest of them staring after him.

"Well," Benji starts, cheerfulness plastic, "looks like my browser history's going to get a lot more interesting."

-

Ethan's taken a shot of liquid courage before he opens the door to the living room. He's not quite sure what he expected to find- black leather and bad industrial music, maybe- but there's nothing different about the room, or about Brandt, who's sitting on the couch with his laptop, an unmarked black briefcase at his feet.

"Brandt," he says, his gaze already drawn to Brandt's unmarked throat, his broad shoulders.

"Strike one," Brandt says without looking up. "Get in here and close the door, would you, I'd rather not have Benji and Jane peeking in every five seconds."

Ethan grits his teeth at Brandt's insubordination, at being told what to do by a less-experienced agent, but does it anyway, crossing the room to stand on the other side of the coffee table from Brandt. "So what did I do wrong already?"

"First rule: I don't have a name in that environment." Brandt still hasn't made eye contact, and part of Ethan wants desperately to either call the mission off or ask him to look at him, to prove that he's okay.

Ethan frowns at that, the dehumanization inherent in the lack of a name, but doesn't say anything, because if he's honest, he's completely reliant on Brandt for this mission. "What do I call you, then?"

Brandt looks up, and something in Ethan recoils at the flatness of his gaze: all surface, no feeling. "Traditionally, you'd call me 'boy,' but I'd rather you not. If you have to talk about me, do it impersonally."

Ethan drops into a chair to one side of the coffee table and leans forward, lacing his fingers beneath his chin. "Why not 'boy?'" He's curious- his insatiable need to know one of the things that makes him such a good spy- about this now, as it's rare for Brandt to flat-out say 'no' to anything, and that's a punch in the gut: the idea that he's been taking advantage of Brandt's good nature-

Brandt interrupts him. "Because you don't have the right to call me that." Something flickers in his eyes, the first break in his polished blankness, and Ethan suddenly wonders if someone had once had that right, the image of Brandt on his knees for someone a powerful one, a shot of lust straight to the brain. "Same way I would have to earn the right to call someone Sir."

"I thought the dominant partner called the bottom whatever they wanted?"

Brandt shakes his head. "No. Here, let me show you." He produces a pen and a notepad, slaps it down on the table between them. "The submissive partner makes rules about what can be done to them- what implements can be used, what they're okay and not okay with being called, what they can be asked to do- and those are the boundaries." He sketches a square on the paper, then taps the pen inside the lines. "Within those boundaries, the top can do whatever he likes, but if he steps outside those lines-" the pen leaps the boundaries, a thick red line left behind, "-the contract's broken, and if the top has an ounce of morality he stops the entire thing right there and grovels for forgiveness." That same twist of a smile that makes Ethan's chest hurt.

"Okay," he manages to say, and scrubs his sweaty palms across his jeans. "So-" he hates feeling this way, off-balance, clumsy under Brandt's empty eyes, hates his own eagerness to have Brandt- insubordinate, polished, controlled- under his power, "-I guess we should get started, then."

"Yeah. Any last questions?"

"How'd you get into this?" Ethan blurts.

"How does anyone?" Brandt stands, starts unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. "Found some porn in the woods behind my house, liked it, met a guy in college that liked it too, so on and so forth-"

Again, nothing but surface, the words too rehearsed, and Ethan's up and out of his chair before he can think, hands in fists at his sides as he snarls, "Don't fucking lie to me, Brandt. Don't ever lie to me, but especially not about this, not when you want me to trust you enough to hurt you."

Brandt pauses for a long moment, then moves his hands to his shirt. He undoes the buttons, and as he slides the shirt off his arms, exposing muscular shoulders seamed with silver rivers of scarring, his triceps flexing beneath ladders of healed cuts marked in white as he flings the shirt aside, he wheels on Ethan and the fury in his eyes matches Ethan's. "I started after Croatia."

Oh, no- no, this is just not fucking on, and Ethan leaps the table and shoves Brandt against the wall, and Brandt- fucking Brandt who could probably give Ethan a run for his money- just goes with it. His head rebounds off the wall, and he grins.

"Is that what this is?" Ethan hisses, gets his forearm across Brandt's throat, and Brandt looks bored.

The door clicks open and Jane and Benji peer in, wide-eyed. "Er, what's this-" Benji starts, but Brandt waves them off with an "It's fine, get out," and looks completely unembarrassed that he's shirtless and against the wall with a highly-trained secret agent who could kill him eighty different ways at his throat.

The door clicks shut.

Ethan grabs Brandt's shoulder with his other hand, pushes him harder against the wall, jaw aching from how tightly he's clenched it. "You want me to hurt you because of what happened in Croatia? Because even though I've told you that I forgive you, you, what, still need me to hurt you? If that's it, then I'm calling the whole goddamn thing off and IMF can deal with it."

Brandt swallows against his arm, and for the first goddamn time since Ethan's known him there's a crack in his veneer, something honest in his voice. "Don't call it off."

"Why?" Ethan presses closer, jams his arm up further so Brandt has to lift his head.

"Croatia fucked me up," Brandt says. "And the guilt's still there, and it'll probably always be there, and you have no fucking idea how hard it was to get IMF to clear me to do any goddamn thing after Croatia, because who wants an agent that can't handle life and death decisions? And now we've got a mission that I know how to do, that I can finally be useful on, and you want to take that away from me?"

The honesty in his voice stops Ethan cold, because the brutal truth in Brandt's voice only forces him to be honest with himself:

He's the reason Brandt's like this. If he hadn't faked his wife's death, had allowed the other IMF agents to know about the deception, Brandt wouldn't have spent years believing in his own failure, his own incompetence, believing in it so goddamn hard that the very idea of failing again seems not only a punishment, but an inevitability. He's the reason this sharp-edged, savage, intelligent agent no longer trusts himself, and he can't let himself be that reason again.

He stares into Brandt's eyes, his arm beneath Brandt's chin keeping the other agent from ducking or avoiding his gaze, and says, "Fine. I won't call it off, but you've got to trust me, and I've got to be able to trust you. And if I think it's going bad, I'm calling it, even in the middle of the mission, and I expect you to follow my lead."

Brandt's jaw works. "I jumped into a goddamn wind turbine for you," he says, low, "and now you question my trust?"

Good point. Ethan pulls his arm off Brandt's throat and steps back, watching Brandt as the other man goes to the briefcase and unzips it. The muscles in his shoulders and arms move, ripples beneath scarred skin, and Ethan's mouth goes dry, then drier as he sees the items Brandt's pulling out of the case and setting on the glass of the coffee table.

"Flogger," Brandt says as he sets a black-handled implement down, the material of the numerous falls obviously high-quality from the blue sheen in the black leather. "Paddle." A wide one, the flat surface studded with metal pyramids that look vicious, and Ethan wonders just how acquainted Brandt is with these items, if he's had that paddle imprinted on him during missions and none of them have known, a secret hidden beneath his clothes.

"Bullwhip."

Brandt draws the last item from the case with curious reverence, his fingers sliding over the coiled black leather in an unconscious caress, and sets it down. It resembles a venomous snake coiling to strike on the glass, and Ethan swallows down the instinctive revulsion at the sight of a whip, an instrument of vicious pain, but Brandt doesn't look at these items designed to hurt him with revulsion or fear, but blatant desire.

Ethan joins Brandt at the table and touches the flogger, surprised by the softness of the leather. "So," he says, picking up the flogger and snapping it against the inside of his forearm, memorizing the thudding, dull pain it causes, "the flogger and the paddle are self-explanatory, but I have to admit that I'm not sure how to handle the bullwhip." He sets the flogger down, blinks as he sees Brandt's eyes, dark now, riveted to the red marks on his arm. "Where'd you get this stuff, anyway?"

Brandt drags his gaze up to Ethan's face, and his relaxed, near-drunk expression is stunning, a stark contrast to his usual icy calm. "IMF provided it as mission paraphernalia."

"Those had to be interesting requisition forms," Ethan says.

Brandt grins, but sobers enough to nod at the bullwhip. "You're right to be worried about it, but that's our ticket in. The bullwhip's a showy and dangerous tool; it can flay someone if used improperly, so if you can prove to the security at this club that you can use a bullwhip properly on your sub and that your sub trusts you enough to let you use it, they'll have to let us in."

Ethan takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and turns to face Brandt more fully. "Okay. I'm going to be honest, I'm not comfortable with the bullwhip, but I'll defer to you on it," and something in Brandt's expression shades towards something that Ethan hesitantly identifies as respect, affection, "And since I'm apparently the dominant, tell me your boundaries."

"Negotiation, very good," Brandt says, expressionless now, eyes faintly amused. "We'll make a dominant out of you yet."

Ethan ignores Brandt's baiting and folds his arms across his chest, widens his stance a bit, because this, here- Brandt's boundaries, what he wants, what he expects- is fucking important, even if Brandt doesn't think so, and he's not going to give into whatever self-destructive impulse is boiling beneath Brandt's skin. "I mean it," he says, and that's a new tone in his voice, a lower, harsh register he didn't know he had, but Brandt responds: ducks his head, swallows, tongue darting out to wet his lips, then straightens and stares at Ethan, daring him to judge him.

"Nothing permanent, no bodily fluids." His fingers flex, curl into fists. "Hit me if you like-" a sly smile, "-I will- but don't punch me full on in the face. No choking. When you're beating me, if I pull my hands off the wall, stop or switch to a different tool. Don't start with the bullwhip."

Ethan studies him for a long moment, the shuttered indifference of his eyes, and looks forward to breaking those shutters down, hauling Brandt out into the light. The certainty of it, of his control over Brandt, settles low in his chest, burns like a banked fire. He nods at the wall, then turns to the table, doesn't look to see if Brandt obeys him because he knows he will. The flogger is a heavy weight in his hand, leaden with meaning, and he hefts it, grins at the hiss of its falls through the air.

The sight of Brandt, his legs apart, arms braced straight against the wall, fingers spread, all his skin and muscle and bone exposed, trusting, there for Ethan to mark as he will, is a punch to the gut. He paces up behind him, presses a hand to the back of Brandt's neck- savors the flinch- and pushes.

Brandt fights him, refuses to drop his head, but Ethan doesn't relent, keeps the pressure on until a hiss whistles between Brandt's teeth and he bends.

Ethan takes a step back, studies the tableau, finds it good. He strikes. The flogger hits Brandt to the left of his spine, atop the curled scars etched into his shoulder, the noise of the impact sharp in the silence, and leaves red marks, his marks, behind. The bones of Brandt's hands stand out yellow beneath his skin, but he remains silent, still, impermeable.

Ethan hits him again, again, unpredictable, varying the strength behind the blows, the locations, and Brandt refuses to yield, shoves back, savage, into the pain. Sweat gathers in Ethan's hair, starts to soak the back of his shirt, and his shoulders start to burn, the repetitive motion a strain, but he can't give in before Brandt does. Brandt, whose back is uniform red, not welted yet, but who remains as he has been, a fucking glacier of apathy.

Ethan drops the flogger back on the coffee table and steps up behind Brandt, presses his hand to Brandt's back, the center of his shoulders. Brandt's head hangs low, his eyes fixed, blind and wide, on the wall, and his shoulders rise and fall in a rhythm too regular to be natural. His hair is soaked with sweat, the sweat of pain, but he remains silent. Ethan slips his thumb into one deep divot of scarring, Brandt's skin hot against his own, and holds it there even as Brandt tenses, fighting the urge to throw him off.

"Where'd this come from?"

It takes Brandt a moment to answer, but the words finally emerge, ragged, bitten off and bitter. "Mission after Croatia. El Salvador. Fucked up. Why?"

Ethan pulls his thumb off the scar, spreads his hand wide and slides it up over Brandt's shoulders to span the back of his neck, holds it heavy there, and somewhere inside him he knows already that the gesture is a promise. "You don't get to ask that question. You get to answer mine."

Brandt shudders, an involuntary twitch that goes straight to the bone, twists but doesn't take his hands off the wall. Ethan holds on, tightens his grip, because he's done letting Brandt escape, through letting him doubt himself, his teammates, and if he's got to put a fucking collar on him to let him know that he can't hide anymore than he'll damn well do it.

"Hostage situation," Brandt says, "a member of the head of state's family by a group of dangerous narcos. Got the hostage out and away, but-" he laughs, the sound low and wretched, "I froze up, got captured. They had me for two weeks before I got out."

Ethan slides his hand into Brandt's sweat-soaked hair, scratches his scalp for the pleasure of seeing him shudder. "Your team?"

Brandt sighs, drops his head. "They evacuated the hostage. They did what they had to."

Ethan says nothing, drags his hand down Brandt's neck to his shoulder and presses his fingers to the white raised lines marching up his tricep. "That where these came from?"

Brandt nods. "Machete."

Ethan bites back a snarl, says instead, "I don't want to whip you until I know I'm doing it right."

Brandt rolls his shoulders, Ethan pulling his hand away, and blows out an aggravated breath. "Traditionally you'd practice on paper or a pillow, but we don't have time for you to learn to finesse it-" he shuts up as Ethan steps closer, clothed chest to naked back, and says, low and rough,

"I'm not hurting you unless I know how to do it right. Now tell me how to do it."

Brandt growls, shoves Ethan away as he pushes off the wall, but obeys.

-

It's the weirdest week Ethan's spent in a long time. He spends hours practicing with the whip under Brandt's critical eye, days until he can tear paper in half with a flick or punch a hole in a Post-it without denting the pillow beneath. Brandt, who pronounced his flogging on the first day acceptable and hasn't had him do it since, paces the perimeter, watches, steps in and adjusts his stance, corrects him when he calls Brandt by his name. He is distant, irascible, quiet: a far cry from the man he had been up against the wall.

The day before the mission, their clothing comes. Ethan's lucky; he gets a black button-up, jeans, boots and a leather cuff. Buckling on the cuff, he enters the living room and stops dead in his tracks.

Brandt's in his usual spot on the couch with his laptop, but nothing else about him is the same. He's wearing leather pants so tight he looks like he's been poured into them, and Ethan's heart stutters as he notes that there's no room for underwear in them. His shirt, black silk, is open at the throat, sleeves rolled up to expose his muscular forearms. Ethan's gaze darts immediately to the open case on the coffee table and the circle of black leather and silver within.

"Brandt," he says, and winces, his voice already dropped into what he thinks of as his dominant register. How can he already consider Brandt his, look forward so much to what they do together, even as he knows it's all artifice?

Brandt looks up from his laptop, the movement of his gaze from Ethan's feet to his head like a physical sensation. "You look good."

"So do you," Ethan says, lamely.

Brandt stands up, unbuttons his shirt and puts it aside, his back an unmarked canvas for Ethan's whim, and picks up the open case with the collar. Something in the way he regards it, the carefulness of his savage hands, makes Ethan's chest ache, but he has no time to contemplate it because Brandt brings the collar to him and offers it.

Brandt's twist of a grin is like nothing so much as an apology- for who he is, for what he wants, for his undeserved guilt- and a red fury rising in Ethan wants nothing more than to tear apart anyone who has ever caused this man harm. Brandt offers him the collar, black leather with silver fittings, his eyes flat, reflective as he says, "Seems appropriate, you being the boss on this."

Numb, something in him protesting the terrible sadness in Brandt's actions, Ethan picks up the collar, surprisingly heavy for its size, and meets Brandt's eyes. He holds his empty gaze as he says, all-too-aware of what this could, should, mean, "Kneel."

The grace in Brandt's movements as he drops to his knees takes his breath away. Brandt tips his head back, exposes the long vulnerable line of his throat, and Ethan hardens just at that, at the trust in that single motion. How strange, that Brandt who trusts no one should trust him here, here before he is whipped.

Brandt holds his eyes, the same defiance that made Ethan want him there in the car in Moscow glittering, a refusal to be broken: the pain of Croatia and El Salvador metamorphosed into desire. Ethan settles the collar about his offered neck, watches as Brandt's eyes flicker shut, wants nothing more at that moment than to curve his hand around Brandt's chin and hold him there to kiss.

He cinches it shut and something in Brandt uncoils, relaxes, like the other man's been carrying some awful weight that's only now been lifted.

-

The bouncer doesn't ask their names, nods them in and directs them to speak to Saqr. Ethan strides into the vestibule of the club like he owns it, Benji's voice in his ear comforting, monotonous. Brandt is two steps behind him and to his left, silent, but Ethan can feel his intensity, his gaze boring into his back.

The main room is dark, dimmed with hookah smoke, but Ethan sees a man in an opulent Western suit catch sight of him and Brandt and stand to greet them. He forges a path through the crowds and takes a seat at the man's table. Brandt folds to his knees beside Ethan's chair, and Ethan's hand settles in what he's already started to think of as its customary place on the back of Brandt's neck. He can feel the eyes of nearly every person in the club on him and Brandt, envious of the connection between them.

"I am Saqr, the proprietor," the man says, his sharp eyes flicking over Ethan and then to Brandt, who gazes at the tiled floor and holds position. "He is yours?"

"Yes."

"It is unusual for us to have Westerners in our establishment. You are Iranians?"

"I was born here. My father worked in the oil business and I followed in his footsteps." Ethan offers him a faked driver's license and business card, then feels Brandt tense beneath his fingers. He'd spotted the target somewhere deeper in the club, then, and Benji, watching through the tiny camera embedded in the collar, confirmed.

Saqr scans the card, then offers a spare smile. "Good to meet you, Mr. Callahan. You'll understand that I will require a show of your experience, I hope?"

Ethan offers a smile of his own and lifts the bullwhip coiled at his hip into Saqr's view, watching his eyes go dark, his tongue darting out to wet thin lips. "I brought my own equipment. Do you have somewhere for me to whip him?"

"A bullwhip is a dangerous tool, Mr. Callahan. Are you sure he wouldn't prefer something... milder?"

Ethan tightens his fingers in Brandt's hair and wrenches his head up and back, but Brandt- dangerous, intelligent Brandt who could snap Saqr's neck easy as breathing- didn't make a sound, break position, lift his eyes: went with it, pliable and easy, all that power at Ethan's command. "We both have a taste for the harder things in life, and here, as everywhere, he wants only what I want."

"If you are sure," Saqr says after a moment, his gaze turned covetously to where Ethan's hand twists in Brandt's hair. "The stage will be empty, I should think; a whipping will be a good introduction for you."

Ethan nods, slides his fingers out of Brandt's hair and rests his palm heavy on Brandt's shoulder for a moment. He squeezes. Brandt lifts his shoulder into his grip in a subtle motion, silent reassurance, before he rises to his feet and moves without being told to the stage in the center of the room. Red light sparks iridescent in the black silk of his shirt, in the greedy eyes of watching men, but Ethan has no attention to spare for them; he is riveted to the smooth twist of Brandt's spine as the other man leaps onto the stage.

Ethan's hand sticks to the handle of the bullwhip with cold sweat as he steps onto the stage. He can feel everyone's eyes on them, catches sight of the target moving to stand at the edge of the stage, and a smoldering ember of possessiveness in his chest catches alight, burns. The gazes of all the men in the club weighs heavy on his shoulders, fans the flame. He sinks into the headspace Brandt has introduced him to, a clarity of purpose he will always be thankful for: to hurt Brandt because he desires it, because he trusts Ethan with his pain.

He nods at the other agent, and Brandt unbuttons his shirt, drops it to the floor between his booted feet in a rustle of silk. His mouth goes dry as Brandt looks back over his shoulder, meets his eyes with blackened gaze, sweat beading on the red-flushed skin of his neck, the hollows of his collarbones. Brandt flashes a sharp-edged smile, beautiful and deadly as a stiletto knife, and plants his hands on the whipping frame, disregarding the restraints hanging there. There is an audible gasp that Ethan revels in, because that's his agent, who he can trust to not need the restraints because his agent trusts him, and it's that trust that has him breathless. Noise ripples through the crowd again at the sight of the scarring splashed across Brandt's back, but Ethan doesn't care about their opinions- those scars are his, because Brandt is his, and he is going to fucking prove it right here.

He steps up behind Brandt and kicks his feet apart, then leans forward over his naked back, blanketing him with his form. Says nothing, because what can he say? This is for the mission, not because Brandt truly wants it of him, and that thought guts him. Brandt tips his head back onto Ethan's shoulder, and if he notices Ethan's hard cock pressed tight against him, the dazed and ecstatic glaze in his eyes betrays nothing.

Ethan lifts the bullwhip from his hip. Silence reigns, broken finally by the heavy bass of a new song thundering into the room, into his blood, stoking the fire as Ethan paces off the distance between him and Brandt. If this were another time, another place, he would be nervous, but nervousness has no place in the face of such faith as Brandt puts in him. Ethan stands at the edge of the stage and stares out over the expectant crowd, marks the target in his mind, before he pivots on one heel and sends the bullwhip lashing out against Brandt's back.

Brandt's spread fingers twitch against the black wood, but he makes no sound. A red welt rises against his skin, silvered where it passes over one of the machete scars. Something dark and bestial in Ethan growls its satisfaction, and Ethan strikes again, obliterating a cratered gunshot exit wound high on Brandt's left shoulder in a line of crimson. He hits again, again, the rhythm of the music pounding through the air, into him, through the whip into Brandt.

Brandt drops his head. His back flexes, painted red with scarring. His hands curl into fists, spread once more, metacarpals visible beneath the skin. Ethan strikes again, slashes across another scar and leaves it marked. Brandt resists, growls at the blow and shoves back into the next one, demanding more. Ethan gives it, and the world melts away, until there is just him and Brandt and the whip, building something out of these ashes. Brandt's resistance inflames him, and he strikes harder, wants nothing more than to see him break for real- for Brandt to trust him with his scars.

He puts everything he has into one last blow.

The whip hisses through the air and leaves Ethan's mark across Brandt's shoulders, red and swelling but without blood. Brandt gasps, something broken and honest and hurting in the sound, and twists, pulls his hands off the frame and collapses onto one knee. His back heaves, his hair soaked black with sweat, and Ethan can see how his hands shake as he tries not to touch his cock where it tents the black leather. Ethan freezes, caught by the tableau of Brandt's back, striped red across gold, bruises bleeding purple where the tip hit, not a single scar left on him that doesn't have Ethan's mark splashed across it. His marks, his boy shaking there on the stage, broken open because he trusted Ethan enough to do it-

He crosses the stage in two steps and halts in front of Brandt, catches his chin and tilts it upward. His other hand goes to Brandt's shoulder and presses against the heat of a welt.

Brandt's eyes are black holes, tear tracks streaking red in the light, but the smile he gifts to Ethan is fierce and alive and vicious. No pain can dull him, lessen him, and the proud jut of his cock is proof. Ethan scoops up the shirt crumpled at his feet and slides it on Brandt as the room bursts into applause.

Brandt shakes beneath his arm as he slides it around the other agent's shoulder and leads him off the stage, gratified at the way Brandt leans on him, the pressure of his head against Ethan's knee as Ethan takes his seat at a booth and directs Brandt to the floor. Triumph wells in his chest, because he's fought Brandt's demons and won, proved his trustworthiness, and Brandt's head against his thigh is a brand.

All too soon, however, the moment ends. Brandt sits up. Brandt's eyes go cold and dark and shuttered like an empty room. Brandt forces his shaking down with the same vicious efficiency that made him a natural for the mission. Brandt withdraws, goes still and cold, somewhere deeper inside him that Ethan cannot touch even though he has touched so much tonight, and Ethan, sick, can do nothing but accept the congratulations offered to him by passerby.

Has he gone too far? Did something in Brandt realize that Ethan enjoys this far beyond what's appropriate for this mission? What kind of person is he, that he can hurt someone like he did on that stage and take pleasure in it? His heart pounds, cold sweat on his brow, terror bitter and harsh in his throat. Intellectually, he knows what's happening- 'dom drop,' the sickening plunge from control and pleasure to uncertainty, guilt, shame- but it does nothing to assuage the fear.

He looks up from Brandt's bowed head as the target approaches and slides into a seat. At any other time, this would be the climax of the mission, all his senses attuned to the target, but right now he can't give a damn about anything except Brandt, Brandt's thoughts, his feelings, his desires- Ethan's been compromised and he can't bring himself to care.

"That was beautiful," the target says. He glances over at the stage, where an act involving knives is taking place, and Ethan slips the drugs into his gin and tonic. "You and your boy are obviously in tune with each other."

"We do our best," Ethan says, "and we've worked together a long while."

The target nods. "I'm curious, though- after such an intense scene, you don't provide aftercare?"

Ethan feels, more than sees, Brandt freeze. He rests a hand on Brandt's back, but feels the other man flinch; stung, he draws away. Brandt never mentioned aftercare, but he gets an idea of what it entails - some sort of affection, connection?- from the name, answers slowly, "He prefers this."

The hell of it is that he doesn't know whether he's lying or not.

-

They've dropped the target off at the pick-up point and are now sitting in the back of the black security van Benji's commandeered. The silence stretches awkward and painful between them as the van careens through the streets of Tehran.

"Brandt," Ethan starts, but is cut off by the other man raising his head across the van. Brandt's smile is a terrible thing, fragile and heartbreaking, but not nearly so terrible as the flatness of Brandt's voice when he says, "It's over, Ethan. I'm fine."

Brandt's hands shake where they're clamped tight on his knees, avoiding his still erect cock like it'll burn him, and his voice is wretched and wet, but Ethan can't say anything, because it's not his place to say. He can break Brandt open and drag all his pain out into the light, but he can't make Brandt give an honest answer or truly trust him, and that hurts more than anything else.

They get home. Brandt disappears upstairs, limping stiff and awful, his face tight and drawn. He hasn't removed his collar. Benji parks himself on the couch and starts writing his report. Ethan, nauseous and still terribly aroused, jacks off in the shower and then retires to his bed. He opens his laptop and takes a deep breath before typing 'aftercare' into the search bar.

He reads a few pages before the anger and the grief get to him and he has to close the laptop, then he's out of bed and down the hall knocking on Brandt's door before he can even think.

Brandt opens the door in sweatpants, shirtless, the trailing edges of the welts hot licks of red over the tops of his shoulders, but he's still wearing the goddamned collar, the collar that Ethan put on him, like this means something to him beyond the mission. There are fresh tear tracks on his cheeks, his eyes two wild pits of sadness.

"Why didn't you let me take care of you?" Ethan croaks, his voice awful and unrecognizable. That's what he's been missing, this whole time, the reassurance that Brandt wants this, the sense of connection, because he can't be satisfied with only hurt, without healing, no matter what Brandt thinks.

Brandt flinches back, and Ethan pushes on. "You trust me enough to hurt you in front of three hundred men, you trust me enough to place your physical body in my hands, but why can't you trust me with you?"

"What brought this on?" Brandt says, staring at Ethan with hard eyes. Still, Ethan can't accept that emptiness, not when he knows what Brandt looks like now when he's open and warm and alive, and he takes another step into the room.

Brandt steps back. The bob of his throat against the leather of the collar draws Ethan's eye.

"The target. He mentioned aftercare, which is something you never did, so I looked into it-"

Brandt is hunching now, glaring at Ethan with tension strung tight in every line of his body, but he says nothing.

"-and then I find out that hurting you isn't everything- that I was supposed to have the chance to put you back together too?"

Brandt jerks upright, lunges forward, crowding Ethan as best he can, his mouth twisted in a snarl. "What, you don't think I can handle it? You think I needed you to take care of me? There wasn't anybody in El Salvador itching to help me, so what makes you think I want that now? I'm a fucking IMF agent-"

Ethan holds his ground, grabs Brandt by the shoulders and holds him there, the welts hot against his palms. Brandt's eyes go wide, black, a flush rising on his throat. Quiet, grave, as serious as he knows how to be, because this is it- this is where he and Brandt will live or watch their team fall apart- Ethan says,

"You can handle it. I know you can. You've proven that. But I can't- I can't hurt you the way we did tonight and then turn that off, because every moral I have tells me that I should feel guilty about-" he hesitates, "-about hurting you and enjoying it. So I've been hurting you, and then beating myself up day and night over it, wondering whether I went too far, whether I damaged you irreparably, whether you will ever be able to trust me again-" Brandt frowns, comprehension dawning on his face, "-and goddamnit, Brandt, sometimes the person doing the hurting needs reassurance, too!"

Brandt flinches away, then catches Ethan's gaze and holds it. "You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you alone with this, it's a lot to take in, but for what it's worth, you did wonderfully."

"Thanks." Ethan becomes aware of their positions with a shock, heat rippling up along his spine as he imagines what it must look like: one man holding another by the shoulders, only one fully-dressed, a collar and welts- he lets go of Brandt and steps back. "You're- you're still wearing the collar."

Brandt tilts his head back, baring the expanse of his throat, circled in black leather. "Yeah. I thought it'd- it'd help, somehow."

"Help with what?" Ethan starts to say, but freezes, his attention caught by the line of Brandt's erection, flush with his thigh beneath the loose cotton of his pajama pants. He blinks dumbly, mouth dry. His fingernails bite into his palms. "Brandt," his voice is a dry rasp, "you're still-"

"Yeah." Brandt's face flushes red, but he holds Ethan's gaze with appealing directness. "I- I had someone, after Croatia. He put me back together, held me in one piece when I couldn't figure out who to be, how to live, and he-" his smile is a sad, wounded thing, "-trained me too well. I can't... do it on my own anymore."

Ethan swallows, the image stark in his mind: Brandt, after every whipping, locked away up here, rocking back and forth in agony as he waits for the command to come in a voice that won't ever be heard again. He can hardly hear himself growl over the noise of his own heartbeat,

"You could have asked me. That's my collar you're wearing."

Brandt sucks in a breath, holds it, sways forward like Ethan is pulling him in with his own gravity. "You're sure? I didn't- I didn't think you'd want me like this."

Triumph rises in Ethan's chest, hot and fierce, and he hooks a finger in Brandt's collar and pulls him forward into a bruising kiss. Brandt grabs him by the shoulders, leans hard into his chest, his cock a heated bar against Ethan's thigh, but he is well-trained; he remains passive, responding to Ethan's kiss like he's been waiting for it all his life.

Ethan's other hand settles at the small of Brandt's back, pulls him closer, and he digs his fingers into the edge of a welt for the beautiful hitch of breath it garners him. Brandt's hips jerk against him in silent plea, but he says nothing, allows Ethan to kiss him as he wills.

Ethan pulls away, Brandt's hands dropping obediently from his shoulders, and circles Brandt to assess the situation. There are so many things he could do to this man, so many ways to hurt him, please him, but right now he wants to give Brandt whatever he wants, whatever he needs: to make him understand that Ethan's not leaving him behind.

Brandt watches him, his eyes hazy, and in a motion so beautiful it takes Ethan's breath away, slides to his knees on the carpet and crosses his arms behind his back, tilting his head back to bare his throat in offering. "Please," he says, his voice quiet in the still room.

Ethan stops behind him, pleased when Brandt doesn't turn, slides one hand in his hair and pulls his head back against Ethan's thigh. Brandt swallows, the sight enough to get him hard if he were a younger man. Still, more than pleasant to see. "Please what, Brandt? What do you want me to do for you? Hurt you again? Suck your cock? I would, you know; you've been so good for me, I'd give you that." He tightens his grip. "Fuck you on my fingers until you moan?"

Brandt does moan, then, his eyes slipping closed. "Please, sir, the last one."

"Good. Take off your pants and underwear and up on the bed, then. On your back."

While Brandt's getting settled Ethan searches the bathroom to find the standard-issue condoms and lubricant given to field agents. He locates them and emerges triumphant to find Brandt laid out across white sheets in the golden light of the single lamp like a fucking offering, all his to devour. Brandt's holding onto the slats of the headboard, but he's pushed himself far enough down the bed to have no leverage, even though Ethan hasn't asked it. He wants to be pushed, then: doesn't believe that his performance on the mission deserves reward, not yet. Ethan will push, but only in the interest of rewarding him. Brandt's eyes are closed, his expression still. His cock, an angry deep-purple that looks agonizing and makes Ethan wince, stands nearly straight off his body.

Ethan pulls off his T-shirt and steps out of his pajama pants to cross the room, naked, to the bed. As he settles at Brandt's side, the other man opens his eyes and gazes at him, a quiet peace shining in eyes that have been nothing but empty for far too long.

"I want you to hold onto that headboard," Ethan whispers, reluctant to break the stillness. "If you let go, I'll stop."

Brandt's eyes sharpen and he nods, his safeword understood and acknowledged. Ethan slides his thumb across Brandt's lower lip, grinning as Brandt's tongue darts out to caress it, and continues in a whisper, "I'm going to give you exactly what you asked for, but you're going to have to work for it. I want you to hold off until I say it's okay to come, understood?" He doesn't ask if Brandt thinks he's capable of holding off; to do so would insult his prickly agent, and he has no interest in undermining him further.

He rolls the condom down over Brandt as efficiently and impersonally as he can, not wanting to make this any harder than it has to be, but Brandt's eyes slam shut and a whine escapes him anyway. Ethan freezes, then finishes the job and lubes up his fingers, rubbing them together to warm it, before he slides that hand down toward Brandt's opening and settles the other on Brandt's cock: not moving up and down, just gentle pressure from each finger in turn.

As his first finger breaches Brandt, the other agent sighs and rolls his hips down onto Ethan's hand, the motion so alluring and yet trusting that Ethan doesn't have the words for it. Brandt moves like water or silk, spine undulating to push him up into Ethan's grip and down onto Ethan's hand in a steady rhythm. He's quiet - unsurprising considering his silence under the whip- but not silent, sighing when Ethan curls his finger against his prostate, pressing his head back into the pillow with a moan as Ethan finds the right languid stroke on his cock.

It's not what most people would expect of two men who do what they do, one who has whipped the other, but it's what Brandt needs and Ethan can give: trust.

Brandt's breathing begins to stutter, the line of his brow turning agitated, his movements losing their fluidity. Ethan pulls his hands away, leaves Brandt trembling, shaking, straining-

Ethan leans down to whisper in Brandt's ear, "It's all right. You've done well, you've made me proud. Come now."

Brandt spills himself with a choked-off cry and relaxes back against the pillow.

After a while, Ethan returns from cleaning up, brushes the lingering tears away with his thumb, and climbs into bed beside Brandt, who rolls over into arms that reach out to bring him closer.

They sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and criticism are adored.


End file.
